4th and mayor

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen an update for 4th & Mayor, the fantastic third-party Foursquare app made by one of Microsoft’s own. The app last had an update back in March to version 3.3 but today you can go and nab version 3.9.

Jeff Wilcox, senior developer at Microsoft and developer of the 4th & Mayor Windows Phone app, has published some statistical data on his blog covering the app's usage in the past year. Wilcox publicly released 4th & Mayor one year ago today, and the app quickly become an extremely popular choice with consumers.

The Foursquare client, which currently sits at version 3.2 / 3.3, boasts some bold statistics:

Used by over 60,000 people, most every single day.

Over 35,000 people have push notifications enabled.

Of users who’ve opted into sharing usage information, the app has been used to check-in over 7,650,000 times.

The app's been run over 8,000,000 times.

It's interesting to note that 4th & Mayor has been run over 8 million times in 365 days. That's almost 22,000 times a day. While one would expect a high level of use due to the nature and functionality of the app, it's still a positive sign for Windows Phone itself.

As for 4th & Mayor, Wilcox is set to release version 3.4 soon which will "add a lot more features for international users, including more map choices such as OpenStreetMap and Google Maps, plus business hours support".

Should you not have 4th & Mayor installed on your Windows Phone, you can download it from the Marketplace for free.

Ah, another week and another Windows Phone team member is moving on to other things. Yes, Jeff Wilcox who's a Senior Software Development Engineer at Microsoft and who was responsible for many aspects of the Windows Phone SDKs (7.0, 7.1) is moving to Microsoft's Azure team to work on their cloud services. From his personal blog:

"I’ve decided that for 2012, I would like to move to the Windows Azure team to focus on the open source story for Microsoft’s cloud. At Microsoft we’re becoming more and more involved in exciting new success stories and tech such as Node.js – along the way we’ve even started using GitHub to accept community open source contributions and make these things better. There’s a great opportunity here and I want to be there to be a part of it all."

Wilcox's work has been key to making Windows Phone devs happy by giving them the necessary tools and tricks to make their jobs easier. Our own Jay Bennett often refers to him as "Gandalf" out of admiration for his work to the platform, so his moving will surely be missed. In turn, we asked Jeff what his proudest contribution to the Windows Phone SDK was:

"My proudest contribution is the Pivot control for the Windows Phone team - I worked hard to bring it to developers in 7.0 and it turned out pretty well. The few bugs (yeah, like SelectedIndex sometimes getting angry) were frustrating, but we did an awful lot with the time allotted and I'm happy to see it in the tens of thousands of Windows Phone apps in the Marketplace. Yeah, there was a time we weren't sure that we would provide the Pivot and Panorama controls to developers :-) we've come so far. It's been a blast."

Many of you non-devs will know his work from something else though: 4th & Mayor. Yes, Jeff is the man behind the super popular Foursquare client which started off as an alternative and now with 60,000 regular users, it has quickly become one of the top apps on the platform. The good news here is Jeff will continue working on 4th & Mayor in 2012 and 2013 with regular updates, including a Windows 8 desktop version for the Microsoft Store. Eventually he'll open source it using the Apache 2.0 license which should be an exciting contribution.

We'd like to personally extend out thanks to Jeff for his work on Windows Phone over these last few years. He's helped in solidifying the foundation for this OS and in making developers content with their tools. We wish him the best of luck on the Azure team and we look forward to more 4th & Mayor goodness in the future.

We're also told that he's not completely done yet with WP7 and has some "powerful developer phone stuff coming up soon". Stay tuned...

We like app updates, especially when they come so quickly after previous app updates. Jeff Wilcox is on a rampage with his Foursquare app 4th & Mayor which is just going live in the Marketplace with v3.2. We just had an update to this a few days ago and now v3.2 adds even more features. One of those is "Menu support" for local restaurants in your area, a new addition introduced by Foursquare on January 18th. It's so new, Windows Phone is the first second mobile OS to support it (Android users beat us, ever so slightly).

Powered by Foursquare and Single Platform, many places now have a menu available - you’ll find it right under the mayor information when looking at a place

Available in major US cities, over 13 million menu items at 250,00 restaurants - with more on the way!

In addition, you can now scan in at some venues by using a QR code. Evidently, some establishments are using QR codes at the front which you can scan to do the checkin, giving users yet another method for racking up those points:

The Check-in page now has a new “QR code” check-in option

Simple scan the Foursquare Check-in QR Code - some businesses place these near their entrances

An optional “automatic check-in” will immediately check you in if you opt in to that!

Pin the “QR Check-in” experience right to Start

In addition there are the usual fixes to GPS locations, invalid venues, etc. making the app even better. Great to see Windows Phone users on the cutting edge of Foursquare support with this app, which of course can be picked up here in the Marketplace for free. Users should start to see v3.2 in the next few hours, if not already. (Oh and if you feel like tipping Jeff for his work, go ahead right here).

Jeff Wilcox - the man who I've described many times as the "Gandalf of Windows Phone Development" - has just done a huge favour to all developers out there and released a control library for Windows Phone which will find and read QR codes.

That's no small feat, the control offers a "camera preview surface" which will then take care of QR reading for developers out there who'd like the capability, but don't quite know how to go about image processing.

If you're not familiar with Jeff, he is a senior software development team lead for Windows Phone, who helps out the development community in his spare time, managing the Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone which every developer should be considering in any app development they approach. Of course he is also reponsible for the wildly popular 4th and Mayor Foursquare application.

Jeff is working on a blog post to explain the control (we'll update this post when it's available) but in the meantime you can grab the library and familiarise yourself with the ReadMe file at the source link.

Update: sure enough, here's the blog post with details on how the control works, as well as how to implement it in a simple app

We love ourselves some 4th & Mayor, the wildly popular Foursquare app for Windows Phone which has outpaced the official app. We're now happy to announce that version 3.1 is live in the Marketplace. What are the biggest changes? Only the ones you have been asking for the most:

The back of the app tile is now a Live Tile leaderboard

Toast notifications when friends check-in near to you

That right there are some cool features for such a great app. We're busy taking it through its paces right now, so we'll let you go download it here in the Marketplace for free. Oh and since it is free, if you ever feel like buying the developer, Jeff Wilcox, a beer for his efforts, you can do that very easily by clicking this link.

There's much more too though with version 3.1 with the full changelog after the break...

If you saw our earlier coverage of '4th & Mayor' this week, the alternative Foursquare app, you'll have noticed that version 3.0 for Mango was slated for release. That day is now upon us and you can go ahead and grab the latest and greatest version of that app in the Marketplace.

If you're like us, you're waiting anxiously for Jeff Wilcox to get a Mango version of his uber-popular '4th & Mayor' Foursquare app out. And while simply re-encoding for fast-app switching is an easy task, Jeff is doing more than just that for version 3.0.

In a few teaser shots seen above, we can get a glimpse of what is coming down the pipe. First, you can now see your friends and where they checked in on a map, which makes total sense to us to have as a feature. Next you can see how you can customize the multiple-live tiles you'll be able to pin, including changing the tile or the photo for it for quick checkins. Finally, checkin deep-links and those multiple live tiles are shown on the start screen.

Release date? We hear that the app was submitted to the Marketplace on Sunday, which means we should be seeing this this week sometime. We're pretty excited about this one! Grab version 2.9 of 4th & Mayor here in the Marketplace for free.

Version 2.7 is now live in the Marketplace and brings some cool new features:

Fixes over 40 customer-reported bugs and crashes

Can now flag photos and delete your own photos

Exciting new features for early adopters

While fixing "over 40 customer-reported bugs and crashes" is itself no small feat (luckily we never saw 'em), those new features for early adopters are pretty awesome sounding.

Yes, in v2.7 if you are running "Mango" you can pin your friends or favorite places right to your today screen--booya! [See image of Phil Nickinson for an example] Now, these are admittedly a tease--they don't yet "flip' to reveal information like most Mango secondary tiles do, but you can bet when "Mango" is officially released we'll be seeing these things happen. For now, when you tap on your friend's Foursquare tile, it'll bring you to their profile page as expected.

For those who rely on 4th & Mayor for your Foursquare checkins, you'll be pleased to know that version 2.2 is hitting the Marketplace now. The app just showed up in our Marketplace, meaning it should be propagating everywhere very soon.

To refresh, 4th & Mayor had a bug this week caused by changes on Foursquare's end, resulting in a 'What's New' page popping up when trying to checkin to a location (see more here). Version 2.2 fixes that as well as addresses a few other issues:

For those using 4th & Mayor, the popular Foursquare app by Jeff Wilcox, you may have noticed a bug popping up earlier this evening. Specifically when you try to check in, you get a 'What's New' pop up and you can't navigate away from it (let alone check in).

Long story short, from Jeff himself:

"Unfortunately a foursquare web service change has impacted 4th & Mayor, says "what's new" with a blank page. ETA: Friday for a fix"

So that's the bad news. The good news is a fix is being pushed through the Marketplace as soon as possible and perhaps more importantly, knowing that you are not alone in the matter. Even better news? If you have a developer unlocked phone, you can deploy the update version right now from Jeff's Dropbox: download the XAP here.

4th & Mayor, arguably the finest looking application available on the Windows Phone Marketplace, has now evidently become the official offering for Foursquare users. The official app lacked what this alternative offered (in terms of functionality and design) and while it was experiencing difficulties with user login, Jeff Wilcox (developer of the 4th & Mayor app) stole the show. The Foursquare team have now removed the official solution, redirecting the Zune app link to 4th & Mayor. [From what we've learned, Microsoft actually developed the official Foursquare app and since Wilcox works for Microsoft, they have a license over his app, allowing them to switch horses, midstream. -dpr]

Should you not use this fantastic Foursquare app, we strongly recommend you give it a go, even if you prefer not to provide stalkers with the exact location you're presently situated at. What gives this news a rather humourous twist is how Jeff wasn't aware of the acknowledgement for his hard work--obviously a casualty of the Microsoft bureaucracy. A welcomed surprise for Wilcox, no doubt.

Oh and Wilcox is busy working on an update to 4th & Mayor, so expect that sooner than later.

Update: See this post for more information regarding a new Foursquare app coming soon.

Looks like the Foursquare app '4th & Mayor' by Jeff Wilcox (see previous coverage here and here) is getting close to release. This is v1.1.03 just released late last night and features a few fixes.

What can we say outside we think this is a killer app? Jeff wants to add more features later and is "rushing" this to market due to the official Foursquare app not working for many. Even in this "rushed" stage though it's leaps and bounds better than the official version.